MOTHERLINK

For someone who dreads the holiday, treading by mothers and offspring laughing together along the mountain path, young families testing each other’s flavors of frozen custard, and having a similar-aged bubbly stranger feeling sexy in her new dress, arm-locked with her partner to their dinner reservation, stop dead in front of me to exclaim, “Happy Mother’s Day!” as I walk out with my takeout bag, here is my Mother’s Day post.

This past week has been a trifecta of heavy life-events, each of which warrant a story of their own. Sunday May 8, I spent the fairest day of the year thus far, with my 11-year-old best girl, my Border Collie, Joni. We hiked our favorite Vermont paths, lapped-up maple creemies at Palmer Lane, chased balls, spun and leapt into the blue for Frisbees, and splashed in the Brown’s River. Monday morning, I cradled her beautiful 43-pound body in my arms, tearfully kissing her goodbye as she took her last breath. I’m grateful for the grace of the beautiful times we had and, I’m heartbroken. Wednesday was my late husband David’s 61st birthday. 21-years after his little boys joined him in blowing out the candles of the last cake I iced “Happy Birthday Daddy.” Thursday, I closed on our home in Long Island, New York, where our 24- and 26-year-old former selves built and lived-out our dreams from 1988-2001.

This is for the motherless daughter, the grieving mother, the mourning widow and divorcee, the mothers who wait by the phone, and the women who were birthed but not birthers, whether by misfortune or choosing. All but the latter which wears as hammered metal distress on my animal body ,on any day, particularly on the second Sunday of May. Despite the uncountable circumstances that shape our womanhood, and the fallacies we vex ourselves with, we are all of mothers in common.

If there’s one thing that my obsessive passion in ancestry research has shown me it’s that every mother’s passage within and through generations is difficult. From the moment the cosmic explosion of cells forms tailless spines and fingernails, we all survive by blind will, make choices with fraudulent insurance, and eat sugar when the milk turns sour.

When I sat down two weeks ago to write this year’s “Mother’s Day” post, I didn’t want to re-write my wistful, and complex, motherly-daughterly story, nor gift-wrap some sage log of aromatic smoke to shade the lines with positivity, too noxious for my own amenability. So I defaulted to my palliative list-making decompression tool by opening my family tree in pedigree view and made a vertical list of the mothers who came before the mothers, unto a continuous unfolding of maiden signatures, fanning horizontally beyond the margins in expanding binary sequence. (This would make my late IT programmer husband very happy with me.)

Wow, so many mothers labored, nursed, washed, threaded, crossed boundaries and oceans. They survived long enough to birth sons and daughters to be re-born, again and again into daughters they’ll never name. How a single cell waits quivering in the vessel cradled in a female ovary, the moment she’s born, again, and again. Until I am in the World, naming them. We are fertile versions of one another, arising from something familiar, opening to a forthcoming, like nesting dolls. Within each of us there is an indirect knowing. We are a suggestion. A run-on sentence. An ongoing conversation that is transcribed as the strands that encode us unwind and replicate.

About this poem: This poem is the result of seven years of ancestry research culminating in the form of a List Poem. As I generated the list of my direct-line maternal lineage on both maternal and paternal sides, a pattern in the shape of a helix emerged. The names of my mothers are framed by Great-Grandmother Generation (i.e., 2x, 3x…), thirteen in all, and birth-year. In this work, I’m descended from 15 generations of women. Though 163 of my foremothers are named to date, 16,384 Great-Grandmothers have birthed thirteen generations of women over a span of 439-years so that my signature joins the linkage.

                                   MOTHERLINK


MOTHER'S Maternal Mothers – My Mother: Elizabeth Anna (Manhattan, NYC) – 1943
HAJDU: (Romania / Hungary)
   GM - Karolina “Anna” -1904
      G-GM - Julia Major – 1880

Maternal Grandfather’s Mothers:
TESENY / TESENYI: (Lastovce & Zemplin Hungary / Trebisŏv, Slovakia)
      G-GM - Julianna - 1883
         2x - Maria  - 1855
            3x – (Anna – 1844)
               4x - Mária - 1795
	       5x - Ersébet – abt. 1770
            3x Veronica - 1835

Father’s Maternal Mothers – My paternal grandmother: Eleanor Elizabeth (Bronx, NYC) - 1915
EYNON: (Gloucestershire, England)
  * G-GM – Louis “Lulu” - 1883
     ** 2x Anna Maria - 1845
            3x - Anne – 1818
               4x - Sarah – 1783
                 5x - Sarah – 1758
                    6x – Sara – abt. 1735
                   6x - Elizabeth  - abt. 1730      
                 5x - Sarah – 1753
              4x - Mary – 1787
                 5x - Sarah – 1748
                   6x - Elizabeth – 1720
                   6x - Ann – 1712
                     7x - Anna – 1691
                       8x - Mary – 1664
                           9x - Mary – 1638
                               10x - Frances – 1613
                                  11x - Margery – 1595
                        8x – Maria “Mary” - 1650
                               10x - Isobel – 1579
                                  11x - Margaret Ann - 1562
                   5x - Sarah – 1754
                      6x - Elizabeth Alice– 1729
                         7x - Alice – 1709
                         
                         7x – Sarah - 1675
                            8x - Margrett – 1641
                               9x - Joseyas – 1605
                                 10x - Susanna – 1557 
                                    11x - Elizabeth – 1528
                                    11x - Elizabeth – 1524
                                 10x - Elizabeth – 1585
                                    11x - Margery – 1560
LOHSE: (Germany)
 * G-GM - Louise “Lulu” – 1883
    ** 2x - Anna Maria - 1845
            3x - Elisabeth - 1820
              4x – Christina – abt. 1798
              4x - Anna Maria - 1794
                  5x - Anne Marie – abt. 177
                      6x - Eva - 1728
                         7x - Anna Maria  - 1701
                             8x - Anna Maria – abt. 1680
                             8x - Anna Maria – abt. 1679
                                 9x - Anna Maria – abt. 1655
            3x - Henriette Sophie Caroline - 1815
              4x - Henriette Wilhelmine - 1795
              4x - Louise Catherine - 1769
                 5x - Barbara – 1775
PRICE: (England & Wales)
     2x - Elizabeth – 1855
        3x - Elizabeth “Betsy” – 1828
           4x - Catherine – 1800
              5x - Sarah – 1774
                  6x - Barbara – 1749
                     7x - Frances - 1729
                  6x - Jane - 1750
             5x - Rebekah – 1764
                6x - Elizabeth – 1736
                    7x - Elizabeth – abt. 1716
                           9x - Mary – 1685
            3x - Margaret Bridget – 1801
                4x - Elizabeth – 1779
                    5x - Elizabeth – 1750
                        6x - Margery – 1726
                            7x - Elizabeth – 1700
                            7x - Hannah – 1700
                            7x - Dorothy – 1708
                               8x - Sarah – 1680
                                  9x - Elizabeth - 1650
                            
                       5x - Hannah – 1725
                           6x - Hester – 1700
                              7x - Anne – 1675
                                 8x – Lady Margaret - 1591
                                       10x – Lady Bridget – 1550
                                          11x – Lady Bridget - 1524
                                 8x - Sarah – 1635
                                    9x - Mary – 1594
                                       10x - Lady Joan – 1578
                      5x - Anne - 1769 

Father’s Paternal Mothers:
PFLUM: (Germany / Ireland)
   G-GM - Ethel – 1889
       2x - Mary – 1867
          3x - Bridget – 1835
          3x – Catherine Dorothea – 1823
              4x – Margaretha – abt. 1800
              4x – Maria – abt. 1817
              4x – Maria Katharina – 1786
                 5x – Apollonia – 1741
                    6x – Anna Catharina – abt. 1720
                    6x – Anna Maria – 1728
                       7x – Anna Maria – 1688
                           8x – Anna Ottilla – 1655
                              9x – Anna - 1623
                              9x – Anna Maria – 1617
                                 10x – Margaretha – abt. 1597
                                     11x – Anna – abt. 1570
                                     11x – Margaretha – abt. 1560
                                        12x – Barbara – 1538
                                           13x - Maria Barbara - 1530
                                        12x – Martha - 1539
                                  10x – Maria - 1567
                            8x – Maria – 1665
                                9x – Anna Maria – 1628
                                   10x – Catharina – 1605
                                      11x – Maria – 1570
                                          12x – Zephia – 1522
                            8x – Maria – 1627
                               9x – Anna – 1592
                                   10x – Margaretha – 1571
                            8x – Anna – abt. 1600
                  5x – Anna – 1764
                     6x – Margaretha – 1731  
                        7x – Anna – 1671
                           8x – Anna 1631
                              9x – Maria - 1608
                           8x – Barbara – 1635
                              9x – Eva – abt. 1592
                                 10x – Anna - 1549
FARRELL: (Ireland)
   2x G-GM – Mary Ann – 1867
      3x – Julia - 1837
          4x – Elizabeth – 1801
              5x – Julian – 1775
           4x – Sarah – 1805
              5x – Mary – 1780
MESSNER: (Germany)
           4x – Eva Elisabetha – 1817
              5x – Catharina Elisabetha – 1789
                  6x – Catherina - 1765
                     7x – Louisa/Lovisa – 1745
                     7x – Maria Magdelina – 1740
               5x – Anna Eva – 1755
                   6x – Anna Maria Dorothea – 1746
                       7x – Anna Maria - 1720
                5x – Anna Barbara – 1769
                   6x – Maria Catharina – 1740
                      7x – Maria Katharina – 1710
                         8x – Anna Eva – 1684
                            9x – Eva - 1655
                            9x – Anna Margaretha – 1650
                            9x – Anna - 1665
                         8x – Lucia – 1688
                      7x – Maria Barbara - 1708
                    6x – Maria Elisabetha – 1719
                       7x – Maria Eva – 1687
                       7x – Maria Katharina – 1680
                          8x – Margaretha – 1625
                             9x - Margaretha – 1604
                                10x – Margaretha – 1577
                                   11x – Barbara Elizabeth - 1570
                          8x – Margaretha – 1660
                          8x – Veronica – 1649
                             9x – Veronica - 1615
                             9x – Veronika – 1626
                                10x – Veronika N. – 1604
                                10x – Catharina – 1604
                                    11x – Appollonia – 1580
                                    11x – Catharina – 1559
             4x – Johanna “Joanna” – abt. 1804

Also the auxiliary mother-figures who enhance my life experience; my lovely God-Mother, Carol. And my mother from a lover, Hiro.

Also my sisters, aunts, cousins, and nieces who have enriched the texture of my life.

© Deborah Garcia 2022. All rights reserved.

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